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Section 1: Project Introduction

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Section 1: Project Introduction

Background Information of the Company

The LiquiTel Communications Company is an innovative internet-based organization that has its operations in the US, UK, and Canada. The Company offers services across its clientele by providing space for cloud storage to its customers across North America and Europe. The company offers high quality services and further distributes hardware to its customer base to guarantee its commitment in the IT business. The company has lately implemented a Data warehouse with BD2 to increase its capacity to analyze and store data of its customers across North America and Europe. To attain this, LiquiTel Communications outsourced IBM Corporation to offer its Information technology needs as it seeks to be able to allow its customers from every location to access their system and subsequently be attend to promptly (Bosworth et al., 2009).

Type of business activities associated with the Company

The LiquiTel Communications has its operations with the ICT sector, and its ventures mainly entail provision of services with the arena of Information Technology. Some of its common activities to its clients include: installation of business intelligence platforms, implementation of Statistical Analysis System software technology to different companies in the US, the UK, and Canada, and the creation of an effectively network infrastructure in various companies.

Speculations on outsourcing and offshoring opportunities

Data warehouse is information system that is used for data analysis and reporting. It is central repository of integrated data usually from one or even more disparate sources. These systems are capable of storing both current and historical data, hence they are used for purposes of creating trending reports for high end management reporting like annual or quarterly comparisons. In regard to LiquiTel Communications Ltd, the company is building a data warehouse with DB2 to improve its effectiveness and performance of its system for purposes of receiving customer reports in different parts of the region, and equally enhance its process of data analysis. With the implementation of a Data warehouse with customers who are required to access the services through its websites and subsequently make their desired transaction online (Bosworth et al., 2009). The data warehouse will increase the capacity of the company’s information to support a broad online platform that will serve its huge customer base in precision.

The data warehouse allows organizations to have several marketing strategies that will be aimed at increasing its customer base. With an information system that is supported by an elaborate Data warehouse that used the DB2 version, its user interface will significantly improve. With such improvements of its user interface, the company will be able to advertise its services and equally register more customers into its programs. The data warehouse will allow the company’s system to support running of its website in the entire North America without failing. This means that as a market strategy, the company will reach out a large customer base. The number of online programs or services that are offered on the company’s website can also be increase to reach out to a larger circle of groups across the country (Ivanov et al., 2012). This is an aspect that was not possible before the implementation of the data warehouse, since the previous system did not have the capacity to support a system that handles a large number of users across the vast region. The previous system could not also provide an elaborate data analysis for the large customers reaching the company through its online platform. The mode of storage was not adequate for the huge volumes of data that were streaming into the previous database (Ivanov et al., 2012).

Although the Data warehouse is commonly known to host various benefits, it also has several risks upon its use. Firstly, Data warehouses pose a huge risks in the data inputs as if is difficult to know all the data that is being stored. It is also a requirement to have a data classification policy, which is applied for purposes of all data entering the system. Lack of this policy poses huge risks of data being compromised. The data outputs also require the company to have software that monitors the outgoing data to ensure it is secure, failure to which the data is highly compromised. In addition, the security system of the data warehouse should be incorporated through programs that assign different roles (Ivanov et al., 2012). Improper utilization of this program put the system as huge risks as it remains completely unsecured.

It is due to the context above, that it is important for LiquiTel Communications to outsource some of the tasks to firmer and reputable companies such as the IBM. The reason for the LiquiTel Communications Ltd to choose to work with IBM’s data warehouse technology could be because IBM is a well-established information technology that has proven to offer reliable services on large scale basis (Ivanov et al., 2012). Considering IBM is an IT company will adequate resources to support huge data volumes, this could be considers as the most appropriate company that could handle the needs of LiquiTel Communications Ltd

Data warehouse technology provide a robust environment that supports numerous slots for data reporting and Data analysis, as well as storage (Ivanov et al., 2012). Considering the large number of customers that LiquiTel Communications Ltd has, implementing a data warehouse would subsequently support its programs, particular on the data that is channeled to them from its online platforms, which are accessible across the vast region. Its decision to use IBM data warehouse is essential considering that the IBM is an ICT company has a large capacity to meet the needs of LiquiTel Communications Ltd, hence improved performance for the company throughout.

Overview of the Company’s:

a) Operation systems

The company plans to utilize a business intelligence platform. The platform entails a completion of a quality requirements documents allows the user needs, as well as expectations to be captured such that the infrastructure and information system can be designed properly. The scope of this part of the project is to create a repository for data collection beyond the standard relational databases (Harrington, 2009). This aims at designing a quality information system that automatically allows user needs, as well as expectations to be captured in the collection of data and analysis platforms.

b) Databases and Data warehousing

LiquiTel Communications Ltd utilizes the use of a database schema, which is understood as the relational database. It aims at demonstrating skills acquired in using databases for business transactions. Data warehouses are critical in providing support to business decisions through collection, consolidating and organizing data for reporting as well as analyzing with tools such as data mining and online analytical processing, OLAP (Harrington, 2009).

c) Cloud technology and virtualization

LiquiTel Communications Ltd seeks to install cloud technology and virtualization platform in the organization after realizing its benefits from large companies that have been using them for improved and efficient, as well as advanced analysis. Furthermore, the company realizes that the use of the cloud technology and virtualization would boost its performance, and equally set up new expectations, as well as performance goals (Ivanov et al., 2012).

d) Network infrastructure and Security

The company has its information system security evaluated using CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability triangle), which mainly define the security policy of an organization. A network solution is always chose so as to support the conceived information systems, as well as allow for scalability. It should be understood that the CIO of the company is responsible for required design of infrastructure and security protocols upon the implementation of the network infrastructure in the company (Ivanov et al., 2012). The design of the infrastructure should be able to support the operations of the organization and equally protect its data.

References

Bosworth, S., Kabay, M. E., & Whyne, E. (2009). Computer security handbook. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons.

Harrington, J. L., & Harrington, J. L. (2009). Relational database design and implementation: Clearly explained. Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier.

Ivanov, I., Sinderen, M. J., & Shishkov, B. (2012). Cloud computing and services science. New York: Springer.